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Texan schoolgirl expelled for refusing to wear RFID tag

A plan by a San Antonio school district to continuously monitor its students using RFID has run into legal problems after one of them took a stand against being forced to use the tracking technology.

Northside Independent School District (NISD) in San Antonio, Texas has spent over $500,000 on its "Student Locator Project," a lanyard worn around the neck that has both a bar code and RFID tag built in. Students need the lanyard to use the library or cafeteria, vote in school elections, and in some cases for toilet breaks, and it allows the school to track their every movement throughout the day.

Andrea Hernandez, a sophomore student at the John Jay High School's Science and Engineering Academy in San Antonio, has been effectively expelled from school for refusing to wear the tags, citing religious, privacy, and freedom of expression reasons.